Sharps disposal for home-based users is far from satisfactory.

Some may be provided with sharps bins, while others buy their own or simply muddle along without due to lack of a properly joined-up service.

And when the bin is full, a trip to the GP surgery, back to hospital or to the local high street pharmacy may be the appropriate step in disposal. But too often, petty squabbles concerning funding for disposal will result in refusal to accept a filled bin. So where does it go?

Local Authorities may collect, and may provide a new bin too, but once again funding can be an issue. Whether it is appropriate to leave the filled bin at the garden gate is debatable, especially when home is a tenement or a tower block.

On the Clinical Waste Discussion Forum, we have discussed many times the potential advantage of sharps disposal by post. It would tick all of the boxes. It works in US and Canada, so can it work here?

Probably yes. In fact, almost certainly yes, though we are led to believe that EU postal rules forbid this. Perhaps that is so, though it may be more likely that the problem is one of interpretation of EU guidance, intentionally or otherwise.

With proper packaging and some very basic instruction, filled sharps bins would be fine in the post. Certainly better than the elderly and infirm traipsing along to the local GP, or carrying the bin in a shopping bag while they wait for the 27 bus on their way to a local hospital.

If the Post Office cannot do the job then many of the national courier firms would surely be happy to step up to the plate and manage collections from home. This might be on a 1/2 day appointment basis, with signed for face-to-face collections. That has to be a good thing.

If regulators wanted to improve the current bitty and largely unacceptable service then there is little doubt that this could be made to work, and work well. Perhaps forthcoming privatisation of the Post Office will se them looking aggressively for new income streams. Perhaps the Environment Agency will stir themselves and make it possible, since I doubt it is truly the postal regulator which is blocking this.

see also Postal restrictions on the carriage of biohazardous materials and sharps